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It's Fun to Play the Piano ... Please Pass It On!

Last week, after six years, I took the plunge and moved up from a Yamaha P90 to a Kawai CA93. My decision was based in no small part on the level-headed support and advice from all the posters on this forum.

Well, the piano arrived yesterday and almost everything is wonderful. I love the look of it, the keyboard action and the sound.

However, there's a fly in the ointment - the gap between the white keys varies considerably, with some gaps up to twice the size of others. This doesn't directly affect my playing but it doesn't look very attractive. As luck would have it, the worst-affected area is around middle C, so it's right in front of me!

I've seen these gaps on a CA-93 I went to check out at my local dealer about a year ago. When I asked the salesperson about it, he seemed to be eager to dismiss my observation by stating it was a normal part of the design...I didn't bother to argue with him as I really had no intention to buy at that time. I am considering one now, and will certainly ensure these gaps do not exist as I found them extremely visually distracting for such an expensive model.

As far as I remember, the gaps appeared to occur where the "grading" steps would approximately occur on a typical graded hammer action DP (splitting the keyboard into 4 zones).

I've played many different copies of pretty well every DP except the Kawais and have NEVER witnessed such a silly thing as spacing between the keys like I saw on the CA-93 and in the OP's pictures.

It's not unusual for those wooden actions to have gaps like that. Acoustic pianos sometimes do as well. As long as it's not affecting your playing it's probably not a serious problem.

Having said that, it's brand new, so you can probably get a technician from Kawai to come make it better. RM3 is a very simple, easily maintained and fixed action. Probably the felt that holds the keys in position just needs smooshing or something. Even replacing a few keys--the most drastic measure I can imagine--is very easy. I would be comfortable doing this myself if I had a piano that was out of warranty. As it is, nearly brand new, it's better to let the dealer work with it.

Another possibility: it might be that the C key curves just a bit one way and unfortunately the B key curves the opposite way. Either curve could be acceptable but together they are not. The weightings for keys is in four groups, not continuous, so the technician could probably just swap your C key for a nearby F and/or your B for a nearby E and then everything would look even.

Varying gaps is a common complaint, especially for 61-keys and 76 keys non weighted action keys, less common in weighted 88 keys. Lower end products at entry level prices might have a higher chance of having this varying gaps.

The technicians would probably need to open up the DP and re-position the keys, so that the gaps are more even.

On the higher end DPs, this should not be an issue.

It is quite a surprise that CA93, being a rather professional level DP, has this issue.

Varying gaps is a common complaint, especially for 61-keys and 76 keys non weighted action keys,

Hmm, that would be new to me, I seriously doubt that this is a common problem with non-weighted / synth keyboards. At least I have never seen or heard this problem occured often to synthesizer keyboards, and I've seen a lot of them throughout the last 25 years. But I certainly didn't see them all, of course. ;-)

For the record, I used and LOVED a Kawai MP9000 and MP9500 in the last 10 years, both had the AWA Grand Pro keyboard ( I guess ) and while they had little varying gaps between the keys, it never was a big problem for me.

I made the assumption based on my observations in the stores and a 61 keys synth I owned which has the same problem. I play the MM6 synth and there is a significant gap between the B and C keys for almost all the 5 octaves, with the middle C being most obvious. It wasn't really a big problem for me, but in terms of aesthetics/looks, it's a little distracting. Then I went to the shops to check out the keys. I noticed that for the cheaper PSR models, this problem is more prevalent. However, on the higher end models like the MOTIF, I didn't notice this issue on the keys.

Also, I check out the 88 weighted keys on GHS (eg. MM8, MOX8, DGX, P95 etc). I didn't notice such problems on the GHS keys too. For the GH3 keys, like those on Clavinovas, I didn't see such problems too. So I assume that generally for 88 keys, the problem is less compared to 61 keys.

I guess it has something to do with the quality checks in place when fixing the keys onto the board.

For very discerning players, such gaps could affect the playability of the DP.

Thanks for the comments everyone - you've helped reassure me I'm not being unreasonable. I've contacted the dealer and he's arranging for a technician to visit and inspect/repair. I'm away for a week, so it'll probably be ten days or so before anything actually happens, but I'll let you know the outcome. (And maybe a couple of pictures to show the 'after' results!)

I have some minor gaps on my new Kawai CA65 as well. The most noticable one is the "D" above middle "C", but it seems to be a common issue and people have said to not get too hung up on it and let it bother you. Im not going to worry about it because my piano plays wonderful and I would rather not have somebody rip into and "fix" something thats not really broke in my opinion........